


Until the twelfth of never

by Believerindaydreams (deepandlovelydark)



Series: Raging against the machine [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Backstory, Established Relationship, M/M, Road Trips, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:36:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28666341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/Believerindaydreams
Summary: It would be nice, if being in love solved everybody's problems.But caught between Caesar's Legion and NCR mercs, the anger of Mr House and the silent tide of revolution building up behind the mysterious figure only known as the Courier...just staying alive isn't the easiest task.Still. At least they've got each other.
Relationships: Benny (Fallout)/Arcade Gannon
Series: Raging against the machine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100771
Kudos: 13





	1. Hidden Valley

"Did I ever tell you how much I hate vaults?" Benny asks.

"It's come up." Arcade brushes sand off his lab coat, empties a ridiculous quantity from the cuffs. The way it slid off Benny's slick space-age suit is almost jealousy inducing. "It isn't too late to go back out, if you're that way inclined."

He expects a "Not while you're around, hotcakes" or something equally old-fashioned, so when Benny just grunts and cracks open a beer to wash down the pork n' beans, it feels odd.

"...is this something that I should know about you, that you simply can't function underground?"

"Functionality ain't the problem," Benny retorts. "You want something shot, I'll shoot it right now."

Arcade firmly puts aside the temptation to point out that compared to a 9mm pistol, he's technically packing more heat; and settles for closeness instead, letting his arm slip under the familiar checked jacket. Benny responds to that a little better, reciprocates in kind.

"You know, I was in my teens before I ever saw the inside of a building? Back when we were the Mojave Boot Riders, it was a luxury, sort of a status symbol...that's one reason Mr House thought we'd be a good choice for one of the Three Families. Nothing of our own to call home before." A low-watt version of his characteristic grin flashes out for a moment. "He didn't realise that meant I'd go hunting a little harder for answers. I was the first one to enter the Lucky 38 in two hundred years."

Arcade tries to imagine that, compares it to his own confused childhood of frequent moves and instability. Maybe it would have been easier with a larger group. "So you didn't even like your own casino?"

"Tosh! You even been inside it?" He offers what's left of the beer.

Arcade shakes his head, opens a water. "No."

"Well, you wouldn't need to ask if you had. The Tops is warm, it's lively, the porcelain ain't broken and the restaurant never closes. That's the kind of place that's worth selling out for. This," Benny says, jabbing his thumb towards the silent intercom. "This is just squatting in a hole in the ground. You're telling me you're a coward before you even say hello."

"Maybe don't say that too loudly. Just in case there is company and they get offended."

"Nope-dope," Benny says, tossing him a journal. "Ranger Rick who dragged in tonight's mattress never saw anyone, he wrote that down."

"Oh! You can read!"

"...guess what, the NCR doesn't have a stranglehold on teachers. There's pre-war books all over if you don't mind a few scorch marks."

"No, of course not- I got out of the habit of assuming anything at Freeside, though." Arcade flips rapidly through the pages, frowns at the end. Cliffhanger endings in vaults tend to be warning signs.

Still. It's quiet here, there's plenty of light, and the odds of them both getting stung by that persistent scorpion upstairs makes it dangerous to go up until daylight. "I'll keep a watch, if you prefer."

"Wake me in time to get some sleep yourself, then. Sloan was cut and hung out to dry last I saw it, overrun with deathclaws. We might not get another snooze-a-licious for a while, you sass?"

"...barely. I think."

Benny claps him across the back, sets up on the cot and is snoring in minutes.

Arcade lays a hand against him, a comforting and still surprising presence, before returning to the three maps they've salvaged that can't agree where the road to Jacobstown actually begins.


	2. Quarry Junction

"If you die I am gonna kill you," Benny hisses, pulling back even further into the shadows.

He is not, honestly, quite sure how either of them are still alive. Given the choice between people and deathclaws, people are technically more dangerous to Arcade until they're out of the Legion's reach for good; but then again, even the Legion would probably have stopped short of trying to rip limbs off.

Probably. He hadn't been there long enough to know for sure.

Arcade is sucking on a prickly pear and fumbling with a doctor's bag, while Benny wields Maria, feeling inadequate; he's down to the cheap ammo and that's just an appetizer for a deathclaw mother. They've managed to avoid death so far, but that doesn't help them fend off this last one.

"How's the doctoring going?"

"...half-dead, but at least I'm not crippled anymore." Arcade rummages frantically in his coat pockets. "I can't have used up everything."

"So if dearie over there gives you a lovetap, you're gonna die dramatically in my arms? As the King would say, most uncool-"

"Healing powders! I forgot I had these, Siri thought I could use them after the dogfight."

"Dogfight?"

"Too long a story for just now," Arcade says, a little flushed. "Okay. These will work, but it's like an instant drunk, it'll be all I can do just to run. Shooting is completely out of the question, so- take this."

Benny almost drops the elegant little energy weapon, lighter than any gun he's ever held. "You're trusting me with this?"

"Much more than I trust myself to use it if I can't see." Arcade applies the powder, winces. "This is exactly as excruciating as I remember-"

He doesn't get to finish the sentence, because the deathclaw finally figures out where they are, approaching with horrifying speed; Benny pumps out ineffectual blast after gooey blast, gives up, and throws a C-4 explosive as far as he can before setting it off with a bullet.

The desert is very peaceful again, once the dying deathclaw stops wailing.

"...you had that all the time."

"Sure."

"Is there a reason we couldn't have deployed it sooner?"

"That was a thousand caps that just went up in smoke, Arcade. It hurts to watch a nest egg fly the coop like that, you know?"

"...uh-huh. I want my defender back now."

***

They spend the night at a Great Khan encampment. Benny coaxes permission to borrow a cot out of their impatient leader, who will not shut up about her hopes to join Caesar's Legion.

The whole situation seems almost tailored to exasperate him, so Arcade keeps quiet and listens to Benny talk instead. Mild flattery, chitchat about old days marching the Mojave trails, it's someone altogether different from the Legionary tool he first met or the playful lover in Novac's motel room. Maybe his experience of people isn't exactly world-renowned, but he knows better than to assume anything in this shifting kaleidoscope is the definite truth; Benny will put on whatever act he thinks best, for whoever his audience might be.

The courier had had that quality too. That ended well.

"Useless bunch of half-baked snack lads," Benny complains next morning, when they're well away. "I nearly missed meeting that courier at all because the group I hired insisted on taking the long way around Black Mountain to get to Goodsprings. When I said I needed to get back to New Vegas by the more direct route, they cut and ran instead of following me to get their pay." He's smirking now. "Saved on caps, I suppose."

"You couldn't have brought your own Chairmen along?"

"Sure I could. There's plenty who would have been ding-dang delighted to help me with a lil' dancing in the moonlight...but fucked if I was going to give Mr House a lever like that. He doesn't think anything of ordering a whole genocide like a gecko kebab. If I went off on my own, fine, he has Swank who doesn't have the imagination of a Brahmin. If I did it with backup, next week the Fiends would be invited to move into the Tops as soon as they wiped everybody out."

He's never really had to think like that, Arcade's aware, a calculus of concern for others. It's one of the reasons he'd thrown himself into the Followers cause so enthusiastically, letting faction sentiment substitute for a camaraderie that he can't honestly admit to feeling.

His world was- is- made up of individuals he cares about. If the intellectual exercise of aiding at the Mormon Fort had been satisfying, that has more to do with his enjoying intellectual exercises than anything else.

"Why do you ask? Hoping I'll fit you out with one of our groovy outfits?"

"Not while I'm breathing, thanks," Arcade says without stopping to think.

Benny laughs it off and punches him lightly in the shoulder, but what worries him is just how much fear he'd felt, in the moment between speech and reaction.

For an Enclave remnant best served by keeping emotion at arms length, this is getting rapidly out of hand.


	3. Vault 22

_The plants kill!_

"They don't, actually," Arcade says. "The courier and I already went in there, nothing worse than a few mantises and- well, moving plant things, but they weren't that tough. We can hide out in the crew quarters, get some sleep."

There are tired rings around his eyes. Benny considers breaking out Nuka-Colas from the stash Arcade asked him to carry, but truth is they both need a rest. Jacobstown is still a long way off.

"If I get digested by an oversized potato, I am blaming you."

He's not sure why that remark should trigger such hysterics, but it's nice to hear Arcade Gannon laugh.

***

Arcade wakes up, finds he can't remember what day it is.

There was coming into the vault, a confused blur of time, he can't joggle recent events into any kind of order. Memory as fuzzy as- well, his vision. Where the hell are his glasses?

He fumbles for the precious frame, finds the case in his inner pocket actually rattling- sweet rads, has he ever even used that before? He sleeps wearing them. They're in there all right, but won't go on his face when he tries.

Because he's currently wearing a rebreather, it turns out. A HEPA filter has been integrated into the hacked-together device he jury rigged at Fortification Hill. Right. Something very bad must be going on, for him to surrender glasses for this.

Or very good, if the astonishingly lurid images slowly coming back are anything to go by. With Benny- had they really- oh, he's never going to get the stains out of this lab coat- using slimy cave fungus for lube? Had they really been that desperate?

Arcade looks around, at the multitude of exotic plants bursting into spectacular bloom, and is forced to the conclusion that yes, they probably had actually.

Okay. At some point he'd had the presence of mind to ensure that he'd stop breathing in spores before falling asleep, so now his mind's clear. If he writes a note and gives Benny the rebreather, together they should be able to high-tail it out of the vault before succumbing again.

Right? Right.

***

If he ever gets back to the Tops to tell all the goody gumdrops about his adventures, Benny decides, he will omit the one about sexually teasing a doctor through half a mile of vault corridors with a copy of Programmer's Digest.

"Look, Arcade, here's an article about Mr New Vegas' neuron circuitry! Wanna see the conductor schematics?"

He'd also tried a medical journal and his precious swimsuit edition of Meeting People, so exactly what is going on in that delicious dumpling's head to make overpowered technology sound like the hottest thing since the bomb drop is a question to be thoroughly investigated once they get out of this damn vault. 

Well, the hottest thing since their own last fuck actually, but on the one hand action stops them getting closer to the vault entrance and for another, seeing his fling turned into a brainless slab of meat is vomit-inducing. There hadn't been any Arcade left behind the soft eyes and half-healed sunburn, just blandness on a par with the Atomic Wrangler's new sexbot.

At least talking about tech seems to trigger some kind of reaction, makes Arcade listen and follow him up stairs even if he's too noodly to grasp any of it. The ad he'd read about snorting Wonderglue to get a high was pure Brahmin shit but it had big words and the doc had listened to it with erratic enthusiasm.

Vault door. Oh good.

"I don't wanna go out there," Arcade whines, fondling up against him in a way that should be cute but has become downright creepy. "I won't be any fun out there, you know that. Let's stay here and enjoy ourselves."

"How about that friend of yours we needed to meet, eh?"

Arcade's puzzled expression would be very funny under other circumstances. "He's not going to fuck me. You'll fuck me though, I know that."

"No! Look- there is absolutely not going to be any more fucking until we get outside that door, okay? We're out of water, we're both going crazy, we need to get out!"

"I could make you stay." Arms crossed and looking down at him with that ridiculous amount of height, the pose hits Benny with a desire that's got nothing to do with the local flora. Still-

"Arcade, are you listening to yourself? No better than some Freeside junkie who can't take a no when he hears one?"

He doesn't stop to look at his lover's face, just applies a firm fondle under the doc's ass and hustles him towards the door. Hopefully the combination of reactions will hold out long enough for them to escape.

They only get just past the sign before Arcade starts trying to rip his suit off, but he figures that's far enough.

***

"I don't want to ever think about that again."

"Why not?" Benny asks, affably enough. "No harm, no foul."

Arcade files that away under the list of "baffling slang to ask about" some other time. "It was- morally indefensible, what happened in there. What I did-" 

Benny shrugs. "Cupcake, all that happened is that we did a lot of fucking, which we were already doing regardless. Take the evening to beat yourself up about it, if you want. I'd rather you didn't but that's your tenderloin to cut, not mine."

"The fact that I threatened you doesn't register at all?"

"As balanced against you figuring out what was happening and actually doing something, not a whole lot. Remember, we were both in there and if it had been left in my hands, we would have been at it until there was nothing left but skeletons in a sixty-nine. You made the choice to put on the rebreather and get us out, even when fried to the gills."

Arcade sighs, sips from their last Sunset. For once he's in no mood to seek touch and Benny seems to accept that. "You wouldn't even have known how to rig a sex pollen filter."

"True."

"And possibly, I'm feeling idiotic because I took a chance presuming on my intellectual strength of will, only to be proven utterly wrong."

"If I tried telling the Gomorrah girls to quit their chems through hard thinking and willpower, they'd have every right to serve me up a slap on the kisser. Same gig, only we didn't even know we were hooked." Benny chews an apple core, tosses it back towards the vault. "So yeah, let's not talk about this again, because I don't think there's much more to say besides you sludging around in despondency, and I don't need to hear it."

"...that's fair."

"Though," Benny muses, "I wonder if it would make a good honeymoon resort? Some kinda project for when this war blows over, maybe…"

"Benny Gecko, you're completely disgusting."

"I aim to please," Benny says, stealing the soda for a long slurp.


	4. Jacobstown

They've been here a fortnight, now; and while he's the one who's going to have to break the silence about their next move, Benny can't help regretting it.

Both of them had needed the break, to be fair. If the community of mutants is under external threat, it's also very safe inside their log citadel. For the first time since being dragged in front of Caesar he's been feeling physically secure, unconcerned. Water in abundance from snow melt, bighorner steaks, it's lucky that most everybody in the Mojave thinks cold is a dirty word or the gates would be mobbed.

Not that the cold isn't appalling; but it's easier to take when in bed with a nice warm doctor. Benny plays fitfully with Arcade's tumbled hair, not wanting to wake him. If circumstances allowed, if things could go on like this, he might have succumbered. Helping out Dr Henry seems to be satisfying for the doc, even if it amounts to fetching and carrying; and there's a clean beauty to the buildings here that's like a revelation to someone used to the glitzy squalor of a pre-war casino.

Reminds him of his old dream to build a casino, the one Mr House had stomped out so effectively.

Arcade mumbles ineffectually, snuggles closer to him. Doesn't seem fair, that they can't have morning after morning like this.

"Morning, Benny."

"Hello to you too, cupcake. I brought you breakfast in bed. Hope you like scrambled raven eggs and toasted cram."

"Aw. What'd I do to warrant this?"

"Being yourself, mostly."

Also, seeing Daisy Whitman in the lobby. Hopefully she didn't see him. 

If the Remnants are going to try their damndest to take his lover away, least he can do is tip the scales first.

***

"If Orion's dead, can we even get back in the bunker?"

Arcade knows it's a long shot, and isn't surprised when Daisy shakes her head at him. "Judah said he had a failsafe for that. I'm not sure what it is, but we'll manage."

He nods, acutely wishing for the backup he's become so accustomed to. Daisy hadn't thought it quite kosher to have Benny in the room while discussing Enclave affairs. 

Dr Henry takes the news with his usual terse calm. "I've prepared Calamity to take over my work here, we can leave within the hour. I take it that Kreger and Johnson are already on their way to the bunker?"

"They should be, even accounting for staggered departures. I just came here," she smiles warmly, "in case Arcade needed a little more help fighting off the Legion."

Oh yes, the death sentence still hanging over his head. Too much to keep track of sometimes. "I'll just pack and tell my companion, then."

Dr Henry ignores that, and Daisy looks motherly, both of which he can take. It's Judah's reaction that worries him, and even more than that, all of them together staring him down. If they offer to let him bring Benny, he won't even have love as an excuse to argue the point. 

And the habit of listening to them all, staying safe, runs very deep.

***

"If I- if I do end up going with them," Arcade murmurs as they march through the pine scented trees. "You should take my defender. There'll be better weapons in the bunker, anyway."

Benny seethes silently, wishes there was something he could do here and now besides merely squeezing his lover's hand.

Arcade lets him for a moment, then pulls away; and it feels like he just handed the Ultra-Luxe an invoice for his own heart.


	5. Remnants Bunker

He should sleep, Arcade knows.

He should get enough rest to be coherent tomorrow, sharp enough for whatever the conversation should end up being; but he can't, not with his pulse pounding like he just injected a super stim. What happens is going to set the course of his whole future and it's impossible to take calmly.

Benny is sound asleep, or he'd take the opportunity to babble a little, quiet his anxieties by drowning them under a burst of talk. He knows his lover wouldn't blame him for vanishing, would accept it philosophically and move on; and in some ways that makes it worse. If his lover was the type to fall apart if he left…

well. He never would have allowed himself to get stuck in, in that case.

Lonely and impatient, he retrieves an old favorite from his pocket, the Cato reader he scavenged back in the NCR. It opens to an overfamilar line.

 _Old age has deformities enough of its own_.

Arcade slaps the book shut, and borrows Benny's _Grongnar the Barbarian_ instead.

***

"How I've missed you," Daisy coos, throwing her arms around as much vertibird as she can manage to grasp. "Oh, you pretty little death-dealing flyer, you look just as fine as the day I left you."

"It's a shame, then, that there won't be any one to look after her when you're gone," Benny says casually. His hands are jammed in his lucky suit, the one that he always wears during important negotiations. If anything ever counted as that, this does.

Daisy frowns at him. "I hope to be around for a good while yet, spring chicken." 

"Sure, but- did you know there's an air force base up nor'east of New Vegas? I wonder that you didn't head there when you first hit the Mojave, it's become pretty notorious."

"It was deserted to all accounts, I didn't hear about it being inhabited until long after I reached Novac.." There's a positive lust to Daisy's interest now. "You don't suppose there are more pilots there?"

"Let's put it this way. Mr House told me, he'd be very surprised if there weren't."

Daisy actually stops fondling her 'bird to consider him, thoughtfully. 

One down, three to go.

***

"Imagine the chance to just live freely, by yourself. No waking up ready to fight, simply...living. A chance to be someone besides a warrior every day."

Arcade might not have felt free to talk about Enclave tech; but he'd been voluble enough about the Remnants as people, and he's heard enough about Cannibal Johnson to hope he's taking the right tack. 

This better work. Trying to fend off the colorful speech that's his usual stock in trade is becoming a positive strain.

"Who's to say the Boomers don't conscript?" Johnson points out.

"If you don't ask, you'll never find out."

***

He has no idea how to tackle Dr Henry, but Arcade's caught on by now and takes over. "The closest thing to a Vault control group you'll find in the Mojave. Wouldn't it be helpful to your research, having a human population large enough to run a deviation on again?"

"As the existence of our group proves," Dr Henry points out, "even a handful of individuals are sometimes all it takes to keep highly sophisticated technology functional."

Arcade looks stumped at that, so Benny jumps back in. "Well, if there's only six of you and half a dozen of the other, wouldn't you have enough in common to make it worth joining forces regardless?"

"My counterpart, if I have one, may have accomplished experiments I haven't enjoyed the luxury of even imagining," Dr Henry agrees; and Benny knows they have him hooked.

***

That brings it down to Judah.

"Why should I risk all our lives, for a group that may turn out to be just as monstrous as the Legion or the Fiends?"

"Two points," Benny says, taking a big breath. "One of which is that unlike those groups, the Boomers have never expressed any interest in expanding, just in maintaining their own. In that context, a handful of individuals from the outside world who also want to disappear and have sophisticated technology to help with that would probably be welcomed."

"And your second point?"

"I already talked to everyone in your squad and they're champing at the opportunity like an R. O. U. S. on a rotting gecko."

"Mr House certainly picks his silver-tongued couriers," Judah says. "But if they all wish to stay in the Wasteland...I suppose we can do worse than ask."

It takes all of Benny's patience to swallow the sheer quantity of insults there, but he didn't get to be head of New Vegas' most beloved casino without learning how to go with the flow and move with the groove of an overindulged customer.

Also, either the man will do exactly what Benny wants or it'll turn out that he's swindled an entire Enclave unit into believing a hysterically inaccurate pack of lies, either of which is fucked up enough to be funny.

***

"I suppose I can't very well go trapsising around the Mojave in this," Arcade says, hands crackling from the interface with the forcefield protecting his family power armor. He's brought it out, cleaned it, and seems to be regretting putting it back.

"Legion wouldn't be able to tell it's you under that helmet."

"Neither would the NCR, but I assure you the conversations wouldn't go well." He takes his hands away, with regret. "I'm coming with you."

"Why, when you could be safe right here? I doubt Caesar would waste manpower just to chase down the tight, tight pressure cooker that answers to the name of yours truly. You know the same doesn't go for you."

"...I'm afraid, I suppose. Maybe not least because you know enough now to hurt people I care about, which is a risk I've been so careful not to take."

"Ah. And it's your Enclave duty to make me a goo puddle if I spill, is that right?"

Arcade lets his voice go hard. "Put that way, yes. Although it wasn't that I was thinking of when I said it."

"Then what the hell was it?"

"That- maybe some of your vault hate is rubbing off on me, Benny- I don't want you to get back and not recognise me. Or worse, to find I couldn't hold it together enough to know why you'd come back. I've been half expecting to disappear ever since Navarro fell, old habits die very hard- look, I love you, but I need you too." Arcade places his hands on Benny's shoulders, shocks them both with static electricity. Neither of them move. "I need you to keep reminding me that it's okay to live, or else if the Remnants all decide to walk into a mass grave I won't be able to stop myself joining them. The courier almost convinced me of that, before- well, before Fortification Hill. Do you know how close I came to just accepting my fate there? Staying on in Caesar's camp like a whipped dog?"

"Worse than a whipped dog," Benny says drily. "They seemed actually fond of those."

The wisecrack doesn't even garner a response. "I know I'm being too needy. But if you don't object, I'd like to come along."

Benny, overcome by the feel of hands sliding down his ribs and the warm cadence of his lover's voice, sighs and agrees.

One of them is being selfish, but in all honesty he can't figure out which.


	6. Merc camp

"I think you'd look good in this," Benny says, delicately stripping an outfit from a merc's dead body.

Arcade averts his gaze. He can't argue with taking water or supplies from someone who wanted them dead, but he's also not ever been the one to do the salvaging. The courier had been efficient enough at that, with Veronica a willing participant. "It's probably been excreted in. That does tend to happen in abrupt painful deaths."

"Already cleaning it up," Benny says, whistling as he mixes water and Abraxo. "It's not just any mercenary outfit, it's got the inbuilt energy weapons modding. Imagine how much more juice you could get from your defender if you plugged it into this."

"I'm a Follower, though." Arcade looks down at his filthy lab coat, considerably the worse for wear despite repeated washing back at Jacobstown, and frowns. "It lets people know I'm a doctor, if they should require aid or advice."

"Wasn't the entire point of this long, long route north of Vegas to avoid getting into any conversations whatsoever? Besides which," Benny says, holding up a garment. "I think you'd be very attractive in this red sweater."

"You're appealing to my vanity just so I'll be better at the bang-bang part of the trip."

"Try it and see, cupcake."

It goes against the grain to take fashion advice from Benny Gecko, of all people; but he tries it on and has to admit the man's right.

***

This being out on the northern plains, it feels like home to Benny.

The Boot Riders had hung out in this area, living off wild Brahmin and yucca, ready to walk for days for water, or a bet, or just for the sheer love of the thing. A tiresome life- he knows how it wore men out, reconciling everyone to the meek and mannered confines of the Strip hadn't been that difficult- though more than once he had cause to wonder, just what it was worth surrendering all this for.

The chance for men to grow old comfortably, and sleep safely; he doesn't think that was wrong, but if Swank led them all back here he wouldn't make trouble.

"Sentimental tonight?"

Benny harrumphs. "What makes you say that?"

"You were whistling 'Riders in the Sky' a while back, if I don't miss my guess," Arcade says. He tosses a little more dried grass on the campfire, chews absently on a piece of barrel cactus. "Usually that only happens when you're lost in thought."

Typical. Even his earliest memories are now tainted by Mr House' bargain. "Thinking about how I maybe made a mistake, leading everyone I knew to New Vegas. If we'd stayed put, what blamed Legionary would drag their weary way out here?"

"...I guess that's not something I can usefully have an opinion about."  
  
"You? You have an opinion about everything under the sun."

He gets back a sigh. "Okay, I do, which is that if you thought it was a good idea at the time I'd be content to trust your reasons. Moreover, if you hadn't then there is a good chance we never would have met, and I'm not so objective a thinker as to be able to regret that for any reason."

Benny considers the flings he's had over the years, mostly enjoyable and none worth a candle to what he had now. "I certainly wouldn't have slept with a courier I'd shot. Pretty sure that's how the Legion caught me, someone was already calling in a favor for doing their dirty work."

"I- that's terrible- you what? Why would you do that?"

"If a hot ghost with an Eyebot backing them up appears in your suite and wants a fuck, wouldn't you at least think about it?"

"...how do you even know what an Eyebot is," Arcade asks suspiciously.

"Seriously, am I the only person who ever took the museum tour at Repconn?" 


	7. Fields' Shack

"Courier!"

His vision wobbles like the comedown from a chem, but Benny's had practice at that, keeps steady and his voice unconcerned as he refrains from slamming the shack door. Maria is where she ought to be, not that he's sure she'll be any more use this time than the last. "What brings you here?"

"Same as what you're here for, I imagine." Her indescribable smile, same as ever. "Waiting to make the run up to Nellis at dawn?"

"...could be. Did George make the same bet with you?"

"Sure did. We'll bankrupt him when we get back, eh? Bastard's probably never had to pay out in his life."

Benny laughs and agrees, wondering just what the hell is going to happen if Arcade hears them upstairs.

He doesn't really want her to die until he has a better sense of the situation, but if his lover decides a little zap-zap is in order there might not be much to do about it.

***

"Uh, why are you tied to a table? Is everything okay?"

"Mmm."

Keeping an eye out for frag mines, Arcade carefully negotiates the dusty stairs. Benny's bandana gag is easy to take out, but what turns out to be duct tape bonds are sticky and hard to remove. "What happened?"

"Courier. If we'd made it here sooner, if we'd just pressed on through the night- we were this close, and now we've been beaten out! I've bet my last on this spin of the wheel and come up empty." Benny rips the last piece of tape off himself, looking more tired and disheveled now than he ever did as a slave. "We might as well go back to your bunker and explain we botched it."

"No," Arcade says, as stubbornly as he knows how.

"No? What else is there to do?"

"Go anyway. Maybe she muddled up the Boomer timing and got blown into pieces. Maybe they don't like her. Maybe anything at all, but we won't know unless we try, so we try. Don't get despondent on me," Arcade urges. "You're going to have to run hard to make it through."

"Go up against a ghost? An immortal ghost who does what she likes?"

"Benny, that's bull. Cut it out."

He fetches their stuff, barely worth speaking of after the long trip here- they'd packed lightly in anticipation of this run. Gets Benny out of the shack, up the slope towards the Boomer base.

It'll be a long way down. His heart's in his mouth just thinking about it.

"This is no good," Benny intones, staring up the hill.

He has never wanted to hear an idiotic catchphrase so badly, or an overworked piece of adoration or anything that sounds like his Benny and not this mess. "Did she hurt you or something?"

"She had me beaten, in the arena. Arcade, I'm dead. I know I didn't survive that."

His lover's clutching his arm and babbling as though he's gone completely insane; so Arcade keeps walking, one leg after another.

"You're a pretty lively one for a ghost, I'd say. And not radioactive enough for any type of ghoul."

"Did you ever stop to wonder why I was in Caesar's camp in the first place?"

"I assumed that Mr House was hoping to hedge his bets with a Legion alliance."

"Yeah. No. There was something there that he needed to trigger...a platinum chip…"

They're almost at the part of the ridge where the shelling starts, now. There isn't time for this.

"Wait here until I get back. And give me the turbo, and the buffout...oh, hell, just give me everything. Try not to die."

"I'm not done explaining yet!"

"Tell me when I get back."

The preferred Followers protocol is to give a patient only one chem at a time, two to those in critical condition; on the streets of New Vegas, up to five in a bout isn't unknown. 

He's hoping not to go that far, but a turbo and a buffout and a stim seems like the least to get away with here. Plus a Nuka-Cola, just for luck.

Taken in reverse order, he gets past the turn of the hill before even hearing the first whistle.

 _Whump_.

He's never actually taken turbo before. It occurs to him belatedly that if he's in the seven percent of the population that has a severe allergic reaction, this is a long way from the medical clinic.

 _Whump_.

Assuming he's in a position to die so comparatively slowly as to a medical condition.

 _Whump_.

There is an estimated probability as to what the chances are for drug addiction, given two doses of Turbo in rapid succession. The information had been on a chart he walked past every day at the Followers fort and never saw.

If he had a Pip-Boy it would tell him with a happy chirp. He thinks he's glad he hasn't got a Pip-Boy.

 _Whump_.

A shell lands near enough to knock him off his feet, but he can hardly feel it through the buffout. Almost at the fence now.

 _Whump_.

"How the hell did you survive that bombardment?" the Boomer demands.

Arcade, gasping, hugs the gate in a shattered state. "My lover's hurt and I need to make sure he's okay, can you help him please?"

"Not contagious, is it?"

"The lady who came through earlier beat him up and taped him to a table so we wouldn't be able to get here."

He has no idea what's going on in his life by now, that every word of that was true and yet entirely fails to explain the situation.

"Three in one day," the Boomer mutters. "Don't that beat all. All right, I'll call out for a stretcher party."

"Thank you," Arcade says; and decides he can safely pass out now.


	8. Nellis Array

The Nellis array is a dangerously overheated place at midday, for anything not made of silicon; so they're sheltering at the north end of the building, where there's shade enough to keep the two of them from roasting. 

Away from any structures would be preferable, for private talk; but they'd tried that and quickly realized it was a nonstarter in this heat.

"Mr House's pet project," Benny says. "After going half a million caps down trying to find the platinum chip, he started Project Courier- there was a clever acronym, but don't ask me what the hell it was. A custom Securitron model that he'd had hanging around for bits and giggles, designed to look like an old film star he was fond of. Her name was Marilyn."

"And that's the courier?"

"That's the courier. Which is why I didn't think much of going out to Goodsprings- so I kill a robot, who cares, New Vegas is higher stakes than that- and she was a one-off integrated model, if she died she died. Mr House still figured it couldn't be worse than the human kind."

"You said she was a ghost- actually, you also said you were a ghost. Frankly, you had me confused."

"I had myself confused. She was dead when I had her buried at Goodsprings, there was no way even a robot survived that bullet. Is she a robot ghost? Am I just haunting the Mojave now? She said," Benny's laughing now, slightly breathlessly. "She said, I know what it's like to be dead-"

"Benny?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up and let me think about this, will you?"

It puts things in perspective now, a lot of things; the way she'd been last to sleep and first to wake, never seemed concerned about food or especially water, the lifeblood of a Mojave resident. Collecting strays who all had reason not to tattle, if they ever found out the truth.

He remembers a few sardonic comments he'd made about chucking ED-E in a lake, and internally winces.

"I still think you have to be alive," Arcade says eventually. "Exhibit A being that you snore."

"How many rings within rings does Mr House have? What if I'm a robot- what if all the Boot Riders are robots, and we don't know it?"

"I am a doctor," Arcade says, after one bleakly existential moment. "I don't pretend to be a particularly hands-on one, but I think I could tell the difference."

"How many times did you patch up the courier and not notice, eh?"

Not at all, come to think about it; what a robot gets out of auto-injecting stimpaks baffles him but he's never been exactly clear what they did for ED-E either. "Look. Regardless of whether or not she is, the bit that's getting you paranoid is the idea that you are. Which you're not. We did not go through that whole fandango at Vault 22 for me to have any remaining doubts on that score."

"Oh," Benny says, looking suddenly comforted. "Yeah."

"And by that logic, I can't possibly be a robot either. Fair enough?"

"Fair." He relaxes, nuzzles his head against Arcade's shoulder.

"That does still leave us with the problem of Mr House' pet robot running around the wasteland interfering with our goals," Arcade points out. 

"Aw, you're no fun."

***  
"She's helping us raise the Lady in the water," Loyal says, face devout with passion. "I don't think anyone in Nellis will have a bad word to say for her, when that's complete."

"Talking about me?" The Courier is wearing Boone's hat, with a Boomer suit.

Arcade flinches, makes a point of unholstering his weapon; Benny pats him on the back and wonders if it'll all come down to this, a confrontation in a lonely hanger.

"Trying to figure out the lay of the land," he says affably. "We're a little out of the loop." 

"In that case, you might like to know that House is dead. We had a few disagreements about ways and means," she says, perching on top of an old barrel with her usual careless charm. "And Caesar is dying. Funny thing, isn't it? I offer him a slave just to do one thing and somehow there's something more important that requires sending him across the breadth of the Mojave?"

"If you mean the brain surgery, I'm supremely unqualified for that," Arcade snaps. "And Caesar knows it."

"If you don't help out, Legate Lanius is next up." Her lip curls. "And he makes Caesar look merciful."

He's tired of fencing, Benny decides, the briefer this is the better. "What's your actual plan then?"

"Something that nobody else in the wasteland gives a fuck about, actually changing things for all the slaves in the Legion. I have Lanius where I want him now, either he folds and lets me win Hoover Dam my own way, or he screws up so catastrophically that I'll be the only possible choice of leader left. That means I'll be in a position to do something about the rapes and enslavement, and I have no compunctions about betraying you to achieve that goal." Her nod to Arcade is curt, eerily polite. "But I still don't know- why are you here? Why did Caesar let you go?"

"Looking for a doctor who could handle the surgery and doesn't already want to mangle Caesar into jellied aspic," Benny says smoothly. "We tried an old friend of Arcade's at Jacobstown, but the doc heard 'Legion' and stopped listening, so this seemed like the next best chance."

"And your honor guard?"

"Little accident near Novac." Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. If Arcade can keep his mouth clamped shut, they might be able to bluff their way through this.

"Well, you won't get any medical help from this crowd, I sounded out the local doctor on the subject of ant wounds and he didn't know a thorax from his own ass. Brings it down to kidnapping Dr Usanagi, I suppose-"

"If it doesn't matter to your plans whether Caesar lives or dies, why even bother?" Arcade interrupts. His hands are tightly clenched, maybe to stop them shaking.

"Oh, the look of the thing. Filling in time until the battle, I'm cleaning up loose ends." Her eye fixes Benny in its gaze. "What are you scheming for this time, charmer?"

"I want the Boot Riders to get out of this unhurt," Benny says distantly, as though there's never been another thought in his head.

She drums her fingers on the barrel, producing a hollow echoing noise. "If I was sure I could trust you, you could take the Strip. I'll have bigger fish to fry after Hoover Dam than one jumped-up city with pretensions of pre-war grandeur. It won't work," she adds, almost kindly. "New Vegas won't make anything of itself until it actually tries to become new, moves past its own past."

"...I'd still like to look after her."

She shrugs. "Well, you're not dead, which is more than can be said for the Omertas. Fight it out with the White Gloves and let me know who wins. Arcade- I'll skip the kidnapping if you have a better suggestion up your sleeve."

"Wouldn't tell you if I knew."

"Okay then," she says, and knocks them both out.

They wake up on the barge from Cottonwood Cove.


	9. Weather monitoring station

Arcade's first thought is a despite-himself burst of relief, that Benny's still with him. He couldn't face what's going to happen on his own.

That gives way to pricklesome guilt, which isn't appropriate or indeed helpful, then to utter panic. He checks over Benny for wounds, finds nothing serious; it clears his head some to concentrate on something he knows how to do.

Damn Pip-Boys and their teleporters.

Maria is still safely hidden, he has his own weapons. That seems reassuring. At least they haven't been deprived of the chance to go down in a fight.

And the Courier, clever as she seems, doesn't know everything. Caesar is holding back about the Enclave or that would have been a longer, much more terrifying conversation in the Boomer hanger.

So he can die with a clear conscience then. The Remnants are gathered, safe, and if he never got back, they have a plan to carry on without him.

Arcade adjusts his position to shade Benny's unconscious form as best he can, struggling with the fact he's never wanted to live more in his life.

***

"You'll go to Caesar's tent," the guard at the gate says; and Benny agrees but doesn't say he'll be putting it off as long as possible.

Everything seems clear cut and vivid today, one of those days in the Mojave when the light is unearthly. He drinks his fill of clear Colorado water, makes Arcade chase him up the hill, whacks a Brahmin to death with his retractable pool cue and takes the choicest cuts to roast over a campfire.

"What are we waiting for?" Arcade asks, his face imprinted with fire and fear.

Benny doesn't even try to respond. Not yet. Not yet.

They walk through the most murderous camp in the wasteland, untouched and untrammelled.

"Weather station. That's where we need to go- break out the Rad-X if you have any, we'll need it in a minute."

Everything the same there, when they enter. Benny descends the few steps quickly, not hesitating, with Arcade following close.

"I was going to explain to you, about the platinum chip," he begins; and almost marvels that it's still his own voice, the one he's used to charm and bamboozle across the Mojave. "This place used to be the property of Mr House. Only reason I survived the arena bout with the courier is because I'd given Caesar the impression I blew this place up for him, done him a favor worth repaying."

"But you didn't blow it up."

"No, I didn't."

He knows where he's going, the precise twist of turns and corridors to lead him to their destination. "Mr House always planned this place as his ultimate last stand. More Securitrons, defenses nothing would be able to get past...this thing," Benny says, wrenching at a door that looks like a wall and ducking the rain of dust and spiders that showers down. "I don't know if you'll recognize it."

"It looks like a life support capsule hooked into a circuitry system designed to let you run something terrifyingly more complex than you are."

Right, he's talking to an Enclave doctor. "We would have heard about the chaos on the Strip, if we'd been anywhere near Vegas...all of the Securitrons would have stopped working when House died. I had the Chairmen prepped to provide muscle enforcement if that ever happened, but without heavy weaponry New Vegas is a sitting duck." Benny presses a palm against the material of the capsule, wonders why it won't take a print. "Until someone reactivates everything. That was my own wrinkle in this whole mess, Project Yes Man, because I got the drop on Mr House's deal and figured hell yeah, I'd like to live forever."

"Emily said something," Arcade manages in a strained voice. "About a guy who plumbed her for know how about pre-war life support systems and then dumped her, was that you?"

He hadn't been expecting that particular sin to ever come back to haunt him, but whatever. "Yeah. That was me."

"Benny...if you go in there, you aren't coming out. These things hook into your neural pathways so deep it'll kill you just to open the capsule again."

Benny coughs, puts on the best imitation he knows how. "The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans, in this crazy old world…"

"Shit," Arcade says, holding on to him so tightly that Benny thinks he might fall over otherwise. "No. You can't do this to us- to me, after everything we've been through. My medical oath would forbid it- screw that. I'm in love and I don't care who knows it and I need you alive, not socked into a machine like a piece of scrap metal."

"Who's gonna look after New Vegas if I don't, the Courier?"

They've both sort of collapsed now, together on the cold metal floor. "I could do it. I trained in power armor, it should come more naturally to me than you."

"Arcade. Who knows that Strip inside and out, already has the smooth moves down and cares about where every last damn police bot is gonna stand? You wanna do this because you don't want me to get hurt. I need to do this," Benny says, summoning up every ounce of bad karma he can muster, "because I love New Vegas down to sewer level, for all her frailties. And I'm sorry...I'm sorry I don't love you enough to throw it away for you. I wish I did."

Arcade is sobbing wordlessly into his shoulder pads. Benny clamps his arms around his lover as though they have forever. He hopes they have enough Rad Away for a decent last fuck.

Then there's a creak, probably one last security device. Benny readies Maria, squeezes Arcade's hand to let him know whatever this is, he'll take care of it.

It turns out to be Swank.

"What in the name of ever-lasting, gold-plated, tiny little gumdrops are you doing here? You're supposed to be looking after the Tops!"

"No, actually, my job is to keep the casino safe by any means necessary," Swank says. He holsters one of the Van Graff plasmas, studies them with an eye that can detect a card cheat twenty yards off. "Thank you for leaving the notes on floor 13, or I never would have known this was here."

Oh, that. Yeah, probably he should have prepared a better in-the-event-of-my-death file. "Uh, don't mention it. Look...are you also here to plug yourself in with the Yes Man protocol?"

"What else? Don't tell me you were planning it," Swank says, cheerily rebuking now. "You like the physicality and benefits of running New Vegas' top casino far too much to be any good at the job, you'll burn out inside the decade. I'm the sensible long-term choice, so don't pretend otherwise."

"You don't," Arcade manages, his damp hair making him look rather wistful. "You don't have a boyfriend with emotional issues who'll be heartbroken by your death, do you?"

Swank sighs. "I had the most beautiful woman in the world flirt with me just so she could break into your suite and then she never spoke to me again. Benny. I'm sorry about that."

"All things considered, I think I can let that pass." Benny clears his throat. "Arcade, care to help get this little juicer fixed for a trip to the moon?"

"Assuming that means what I think it means...I am at your disposal."

***

Swank's even brought a supply of Stealth Boys along, so they don't have any trouble getting out of camp.

It's not as much fun as Benny's initial suggestion, which involved blasting the entire fort away with their new robot army, but he has to admit it's a little more discreet.


	10. The Tops

"Are you ordering room service again?"

"I wouldn't have to if everybody hadn't beat me to the Nuka-Colas," Arcade says, mock defensively. He settles back next to Benny, going for a mannered but still very noticeable closeness. "Put it on my tab."

"Thought we didn't have tabs," Veronica says, munching a Fancy Lad.

"As long as you don't try to buy the Ultra-Luxe fountain or anything...damn it, I forgot I'd need a new accountant. Swank was always so good at the paperwork side of the business, I'm gonna need more support to deal with the NCR victory celebrations."

"Assuming it is an NCR victory," Arcade says softly, staring at the jukebox. Mr New Vegas hasn't played Johnny Guitar in hours, what with all the news flashes. "Maybe I should have gone with the rest of the Remnants after all."

"GRANDMA MISSES DEAR DR HENRY," Lily booms.

"If I don't get to be immortal, you don't get to fling yourself into battle on behalf of a crazed bureaucracy that's been chasing you since you were born."

He gets back a rueful chuckle. "Fair enough."

There's a ring at the elevator door. Benny goes over, checks the eyehole to see if it's the waiter. It's the waiter.

He overtips because he can and goes back to the group, crossing his fingers. If the Dam does fall New Vegas will still be able to keep the lights on, but they'll still be the obvious next target.

Especially with all these robots rushing the battlefield that are clearly souped-up Securitrons.

"I told Boone, if you get the adorable doggie killed in the battle don't come back, just slouch on home to Novac. Think he took me seriously?" Veronica asks.

"He's more likely not to come back himself," Cass points out, sipping a scotch. "Which he might prefer."

"I just feel sorry for the Eyebot," Arcade says heavily. "You know it's going to follow the courier to the death."

"Like to like," Veronica says. "And she did fix him after all."

"That really ought to have put me on the right track from the start, her affinity with robots," Arcade muses. "Fixing an Eyebot with a few fission batteries and a blob of bubble gum..."

"I hope there's stories about her," Veronica says enthusiastically. "I mean, yes, I hope she dies in a fire because if she doesn't there's still her trying to murder my entire family to deal with later, but I hope she becomes a legend to inspire women across the Legion. Maybe if they get some female officers in the ranks they'll be more amenable to reason." 

"Or just remain equally horrifying but with twice the personnel now," Arcade says drily.

Veronica shrugs and tears the packaging from another snack cake.

Mr New Vegas' jingle ends; the AI's voice is hushed, excited. "An update on the Hoover Dam situation..."

Everyone else leans forward in excitement, except Benny; who relaxes in the comforting crescent of Arcade's left arm around his shoulder blades.

He's done everything he could, called in favors, arranged treaties, sent everything available to assist the NCR except for a last-ditch defence force if Highway 95 should be overrun. Arcade's power armor is incongruous with the rest of the Tops armory, but it's in easy reach, and it's not the only trick up his sleeve; whatever happens at the Dam, they'll be prepared.

Benny brushes a kiss against his cupcake's cheek, and settles back for the war broadcast.


End file.
